As soon as you hit Colombo you see it. It dominates the skyline and is so unusual that you are not at first sure what it can be. It is Sambodhi Chaithya the Buddhist Temple.
It is up in the air. You have to climb up a lot of stairs to get into the place.
We went up at sunset to get a view over the sea and city. The murals were really interesting too.
Is it dull being an atheist?
We are born, we love, we have fun, we share, we create, we solve problems, we care, we make things better, we love a bit more, we play music, dance and sing, we paint, we write, we think, we wonder, we are in awe, we raise families, we love a lot more, we share with friends, we drink, we party, we create, we help one another, we laugh a lot, cuddle, hug and cry a bit, we die.
It’s not so bad to open your eyes in a wondrous majestic place for a while. In fact it’s awesome.
My grandchildren have been staying with us. My daughter has moved back from Holland to England. They haven’t seen her for a while.
Today we are taking them back to my daughter and they will see their new house.
My granddaughter is seven years old. I asked her whether she was excited today (not having seen her mummy for a while). She said she was. I asked her what she was most excited about – expecting something about her mum or her new house. She told me:
‘I’m excited about being able to breathe air.’
Perhaps we should wake up excited about the mundane wonders of life – like being able to breathe.
There are many things in life that are wondrous mysteries; things that are beyond our ability to understand; things that fill me with awe:
The vastness of space with its trillions of galaxies;
The beginning of the universe;
The beginning of life on this planet;
The evolution of life to create this wondrous panoply of nature;
The beauty of human creativity – music, dance, art, writing, sport, poetry, sculpture, architecture…….;
The wonders of natural beauty – the rocks, waves, gorges, mountains, sunsets, sunrises, blue skies, clouds and lakes;
The pleasure of love, friendship and sharing.
I can spend my life marvelling up at a night sky, sharing a meal, watching a sunset or touring around the natural beauties of this planet.
I can do all this because of the greatest wonder of all – my consciousness.
In my head I have a rich blancmange of trillions of nerve cells that interconnect in ways more complex than any computer to create a network that provides me with consciousness.
That fills me with awe. How does it work?
This network has evolved from basic nets and ganglia to this enormously huge swelling that we call a brain. It is equipped with senses that provide us with vision, sound, touch, taste and scent so that we are able to perceive the world around us. It provides us with a means of coordinating these senses into a view of the world. It provides us with a sense of self and the ability to think.
That picture we have is far from complete. Our consciousness is imperfect. We only perceive a fraction of the energy, the spectrum, around us. What would the world look like if we could see in X-Ray, gamma, ultra-violet or infra-red? If we had the senses of other creatures – the homing sense of birds, the smell of dogs? Our world is a fraction of what is actually surrounding us.
With modern brain imagery we are able to see much better how this incredible structure we call a brain works. With our understanding of biochemistry we are able to comprehend a lot more of how the neurones operate on a cellular and subcellular level – the chemicals involved, ionic shifts and the way the network creates our consciousness.
Maybe one day soon we will be able to understand the magic of consciousness? We are only at the beginning of the age of science. As mere microbes on the surface of a tiny planet we’ve already done remarkably well. Give it a thousand years or so and I’m sure we’ll fathom out a lot more.
Human consciousness is one of the big marvels.
Eric Idle is an idol of mine.
Monty Python brightened up my days as a youth and altered comedy from mindless Sit Com to something more alternative with more bite.
Eric’s intelligence shone through as you can see in the lyrics of this song and many others. Who else could have take a bunch of facts about the universe and created such a delightful song. with awe, wonder and humour in equal dollops.
WHENEVER LIFE GETS YOU
DOWN, MRS. BROWN, AND
THINGS SEEM HARD OR TOUGH,
AND PEOPLE ARE STUPID,
OBNOXIOUS OR DAFT AND YOU
FEEL THAT YOU’VE HAD QUITE
ENOUGH…
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving,
And revolving at 900 miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour
Of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our Galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It’s 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick
But out by us it’s just 3,000 light years wide
We’re 30,000 light years from galactic central point,
We go round every 200 million years
And our Galaxy is only one of millions and billions
In this amazing and expanding Universe
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
12 million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely it is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
Because there’s bugger all down here on Earth.
Adapted from an old Gaelic blessing for L in times of trouble. Knowing our community is thinking of you.
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of mother nature,
Of the world to you.
Deep peace of earth to you.
I’ve just completed my work on the roof! I’ve spent four days up on the roof replacing cladding around the dormer windows and repainting them all. You get a different view of the world from up on high!
I haven’t been so high for a long time!
Because everyone was so worried about me hanging on by my fingertips at such height I reassured them by using a rope to secure myself. Perhaps I should not have tied it round my neck? (But there again there are many who were urging me to do just that and let go!)
Anyway – to put minds at rest – I am back down to earth!
These are my six books of poetry. They are available as paperback or on Kindle from Amazon – all for under £5 for a paperback. You could buy the whole lot for just £27.62!!
They are not conventional poetry books. They are like you find on my blog with a page of explanatory prose followed by the poem. The prose is as important as the poem to me.
Codas, Cadence and Clues – £4.97
Stanzas and Stances – £5.59
Poems and Peons – £4.33
Rhymes and Reasons – £3.98
Prose, Cons and Poetry – £4.60
Vice and Verse – £4.15
Science Fiction books:
Ebola in the Garden of Eden – paperback £6.95 Kindle £2.56 (or free on unlimited)
Green – paperback £9.98 Kindle £2.56 (or free on unlimited)
Rock Music books
In Search of Captain Beefheart – paperback £6.91 Kindle £1.99 (or free on unlimited)
3&sr=1-1&keywords=opher+Goodwin
Other selected books and novels:
Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings – a book of anecdotes mainly from the sixties and other writing.
More Anecdotes – following the immense popularity of the first volume I produced a second
Goofin’ with the cosmic freaks – a kind of On the Road for the sixties
The book of Ginny – a novel
In Britain :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1461306850&sr=1-2-ent
In America:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=opher+goodwin
In all other countries around the world check out your regional Amazon site and Opher Goodwin books.
3.
So how would I like to die?
Peaceably in my sleep like my grandfather – not screaming and terrified like his passengers.
Well yes. I would prefer to die peaceably in my sleep without any long drawn out illness. I do not relish pain or the fear that comes from having to confront the end of everything. I’ve watched people going through the process of dying. It is not pleasant but perhaps it is worse for the spectators?
Heart failure is the best – at around three in the morning just after completing a pleasant set of dreams. The heart stops and the oxygen supply dries up – the brain shuts down. The various other tissues and organs follow suit in order of their oxygen requirements. I think the skin is the last to go – days later. That’s why you have to shave corpses.
Here are a few of my books. They are available on Amazon in both paperback and on kindle.
Anecdotes – paperback just £6.95 Kindle – just £1.99 or free on Kindle Unlimited
More Anecdotes – paperback just £7.29 Kindle – just £2.12 or free on Kindle Unlimited
My other books are also available. There is some unique to suit most tastes if you like something thought provoking and alternative.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1459501044&sr=1-2-ent